Japan may aim to down North Korea missilePeter Alford, Tokyo correspondent | February 28, 2009
Article from: The Australian
JAPAN is considering trying to knock out a North Korean missile if it approaches Japanese territory, Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada said yesterday.
Under questioning by reporters as North Korea intensified preparations for a long-range missile launch, Mr Hamada did not say whether activating Japan's ballistic missile defence system was a serious option - but it was under consideration.
"The Defence Ministry has long been considering such a thing," Mr Hamada said.
"It's not something we have to comment on in one way or another just because we have a situation like this."
The Japanese BMD system was developed in co-operation with the US and limited testing has produced mixed results.
There would be serious diplomatic and international legal ramifications if a Japanese anti-ballistic missile was launched against what North Korea insists will be a communications satellite launch for its so-called peaceful space program.
The three-stage Taepodong-2 ballistic missile the North Koreans have under development, and are expected to test within a fortnight, can carry either a warhead or a small satellite.
A Seoul newspaper, quoting South Korean government sources, yesterday reported North Korean technicians had started testing missile-tracking radar and other electronic monitoring equipment at the launch site, Musudan-ri, on the northeast coast.
Similar activity started about two weeks before both of the previous long-range missile launches, in 1998 and July 2006.
A South Korean news agency, Yonhap, also reported a senior official at North Korea's UN mission, Kim Myong-kil, confirming that final preparations for a launch were under way.
The launch was "not an issue subject to negotiations" between North Korea and the US or other countries, Mr Kim said, but "our independent right".
It was North Korea's Taepodong-1 test in 1998 that forced a previously unwilling Japan to join the US in BMD development.
The inter-operable Japanese and US systems are based on two levels of missile defence and the powerful Aegis ship-borne radar and missile guidance technology. The first layer, which would be used in the case of a North Korean missile approaching Japan, is targeting it with SM-3 interceptor missiles from Aegis destroyers.
The task is extremely demanding, likened to "shooting a bullet with a bullet", and in the two Japanese tests so far, one interceptor struck its target and the other missed.
Source
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25115828-2703,00.html
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